“Mmm, I’m listening.”
“What did I just say then?”
“Tiffany’s your only sibling and you still see your mother.”
“Right, and when we were kids, we were kidnapped by aliens. They sucked our brains out through a straw, and now I’m gay and she’s dating two guys who know about each other.”
“What?”
“Actually, that part’s true.”
“You had your brains sucked out-”
“No, you dipshit. The fact Tiff’s seeing two guys. Isaac and Jason. They know about each other. Very modern and avant garde. Our mother’s so proud. I’m gay and she’s a slut.”
“Your mother’s a—”
“No, my mother is not a slut. Jesus, Blackman, do you ever listen to a word I say?”
“Sorry. So.” I shifted in my seat, trying to pay attention. “You were saying. Tiffany’s a slut?”
“Yes.” Steven nodded, apparently grateful for my attention. Tiffany is the whore in the Kenton family. Our mother is an angel.”
“I’m sure she is,” I muttered, wondering what the point was of all this small talk.
When Steven started pacing again, I settled, relieved, but he made sure he got in my way, slowing when in front of the television.
“Steven.” But it wasn’t a call for his attention, though he sure had mine. I tried to inject as much admonition into my tone as possible, but that wasn’t very much and I sounded whinier than I would have cared to admit.
“What?” He stopped, hands in pockets, drawing my attention to the bulge in his jeans.
Most of which was probably his hands displacing the fabric.
Not that I was looking.
“Oh,” he continued, stepping out of the way of the television. “I’m blocking your view?”
“View’s fine,” I muttered, not meeting his eyes. I didn’t need to do so to know they’d be twinkling in mischief. I wanted him to leave me alone. I didn’t want him to leave me alone.
This flirting, this halfway house of human interaction, gave me fits.
Apparently normal people liked to start off with a hello, a what’s-your-name, a date, dinner, seduction by degrees, all that bollocks. Me? I preferred to fuck when I was horny and be left alone when I wasn’t. Granted, he couldn’t leave me alone, not if we were talking matters of proximity. He lived here.
I’d assumed—hoped—he’d go right back to being a near-stranger after I’d shot my load all over him. Proximity meant he couldn’t leave me alone but a newfound penchant for taunting myself with the memory of that epic hand-job meant I couldn’t stop thinking about him.
I could cope with extremes but Steven Bloody Kenton seemed to want to go from one to the other, then fuck with my head by settling somewhere in the middle.
“Just trying to make conversation.” He leaned against the wall by the window frame, but not looking out this time. Apparently he found the grumpy bastard sitting on the settee more interesting than the cookie-cutter semis across the road.
I’ve got a semi for him, I thought, trying not to snort with laughter at my own black humour. He knew he turned me on but I didn’t want him to see proof.
Or touch it.
Or…
I gulped.
“What time’s Gary due back?”
“About half ten,” I blurted out, instantly feeling uncomfortable. I’d dropped myself in it without exactly knowing what ‘it’ was. And all because Steven had flipped the topic on me, throwing me with that swift, sharp change of subject, giving me no time to think up a reply with which I could avoid whatever it was he was trying to do.
“Gemma coming back here with him?”
I gave him a shrug. It probably looked more like I was trying to shake the chip off my shoulder. “Dunno. He didn’t say.” Getting up and just heading for the kitchen for more munchies, rude or not rude? Yeah, probably is. Sighing, I flopped back, clasped hands resting in my lap, not hearing the television even though I knew I hadn’t hit the mute button. I’d watched this DVD time and time again already, but I was fucked if I could remember what this episode was about.
Yeah. Fucked. Chance would be a fine thing.
“Something up?” Steven ventured, and I glanced across the room. “Wrong, I mean. Something wrong?”
Bastard. You know exactly what you’re doing.
“Thought you might have another migraine coming on, the way you’re rubbing your…” He paused, cleared his throat, pointed briefly at me. “Temple.”
“No.”
“I remember what happened last time you claimed to have a migraine.”
“Yes. Well.” I clenched my jaw to prevent myself saying anything I’d later regret like, oh my God, please do it again, don’t make me beg, please do it. Breathing deeply through my nose, I forced my tense facial muscles to relax. “I don’t have a migraine.” Although you’re likely to fucking give me one. I coughed. The thought of Steven Kenton giving me one was too distracting to—
“Shame.”
I glared at him. “Stop it.”
“Stop what?”
“You know what.”
“There’s no need to be so bloody Kit. There’s nobody else at home this evening. We have the place to ourselves.”
“Yeah.” I tried to focus on the television but nothing registered. Actors said words, but they went in one ear and out the other. “That’s what I’m scared of,” I muttered, and grabbed the remote control. My finger hovered over the mute button for the longest second in history before I pressed it. Silencing the action on screen was an unmistakeable border between before and after. Before I gave in and after I acknowledged Steven had my attention.
“You’re not scared of me, are you?”
“No,” I shot back, a little too quickly.
“Oh.” He shrugged. “Good. Otherwise I might have been offended. You’re obviously not busy, so I thought we could talk, although I’m sure I could find something else for my mouth to do.”
“Jesus.” I closed my eyes and took a long, slow, deep breath. “You are not helping.”
When I opened my eyes again, Steven was staring at me, and smirking.
“Are you really that scared of conversation?”
“Are you really that keen to have one?”
“No, but it’s polite to get to know each other before I make you come again.”
A cough of astonishment burst out of me and I thanked God I wasn’t still eating jelly beans or drinking coffee as he spoke. “I beg your—”
“Okay, okay, just trying to shock a reaction out of you,” he muttered, running a finger along the edge of one of the shelves. I imagined him wearing white gloves and inspecting the house for dust motes, could have sworn I heard the sigh in time with the rise and fall of his chest. It was so much easier to watch him wander around the room, killing time, than it was to pay attention to whichever DVD it was I’d slotted into the player earlier.
“You don’t have to worry; I’m not going to do anything untoward,” he said softly, not even looking at me, nor raising his voice much, overtly confident that I’d be attuned to him.
When he spun round again I startled, but kept my eyes on him. I wouldn’t fool either of us if I averted my gaze and pretended to concentrate on anything else. I wasn’t that good an actor.
“You’re concerned about what happened before,” he said, making it a statement and an accusation all at once, even while absolving himself of any imagined culpability. What happened rather than what I did made it passive. An occurrence. Not something we did together.
I hitched both shoulders in a shrug that was more of a judder or nervous tic. “No.” I was no better at lying than I was acting. “Maybe.”
“I don’t see why, you know.”
“Because…”
Steven’s eyebrows lifted in anticipation of my answer.
Breath whooshed out of me along with any protest. There was no way of saying it out loud without sounding like a fucking retard. I don’t want to get involved with yo
u because I’ll waste my time waiting for you to leave.
“There’s no reason for you to get jittery about it.” Steven neared the settee and spent an age making me wonder if he was just going to bloody well sit before he did, but beside me, not twisted round to look at me. As if we were side-by-side on a sports bench, or in a doctor’s waiting room. As if I made him just as fidgety as he did me.
But that made no sense. His wandering around the living room, picking things up, giving them a cursory glance, putting them down again, pacing, trying and failing to make small talk…none of that was the jitters, surely. It was just him being annoying. Inflicting his presence on me.
“It was just a fucking…” He slumped back, running both hands through his curly black hair and I wished they were my hands. The first time I’d laid eyes on him I’d fantasised about tangling my fingers in his hair while he knelt in front of me and it was possible.
Distinctly possible. He would—I knew it. If I so much as hinted… “Just a fucking hand-job, you know?”
“Yeah.” More excuses leapt into my mouth but I swallowed them back— gulped, even, because that’s all they would have been. Excuses.
“Look.” Steven moved lightning-fast, and if I’d had any hope of regaining my equilibrium with him sitting so close by when we had the house to ourselves, it vanished then, when he twisted to one side to face me. One leg curled up in front of him on the settee, one arm along the seat back, he frowned, concentrated—I thought—on my mouth and waited for it to spew forth the excuses I tried to silence. “I know something about this doesn’t sit well with you.” The furrows in his brow deepened and I realised he was waiting, again, for me to say no. He’d grown used to that. He’d probably also grown used to it being bullshit. “And whatever it is—”
“I’m not good with people.”
“Yeah.” He nodded, giving in to a laugh, which he quickly smothered. “I noticed.”
“No, I mean you.”
“I noticed that too.”
“Look. Anyone I get involved with…”
“I wanked you off once—let’s not start planning the wedding, eh?”
A chill ran up my spine and for a moment, just a moment, my heart stopped. Exactly what I’d been afraid of. Me mentioning anything like ‘involvement’ or a ‘relationship’ and freaking the other person out was such a deep-seated fear I went completely the other way, held everyone at arm’s length. And this was exactly why. Just the vaguest, most tentative hint and he thought I thought…
“We live in the same house; that’s kind of involved, even if it means we co-sign a tenancy agreement rather than a marriage certificate,” I threw at him, embarrassment roiling my stomach like one too many Tequila shots when I was already bombed on cheap beer and grass.
“Jeez, Blackman, I was only kidding.” He drew back, inclined his head a touch.
I was completely useless at getting deadpan humour, especially when it related to interpersonal relationships. Kit Blackman, computer nerd, was devoid of any sense of subtlety when in close proximity to a hot man.
“Whatever you meant by it, you don’t have to worry about me planning the wedding or any shit like that,” I said, scrabbling around for the remote control again. Maybe if I switched the sound back on it’d give me something to listen to besides Steven, and my own confusion.
“I was only trying to explain to you why I don’t get involved with people; and somehow it’s been twisted to make me feel like—”
“Hey, will you stop that?” Steven laid his hand on top of mine before I could grab the remote and nearly every part of me froze at his touch.
I managed to look at him, though. God knew how. I let my gaze drift over his face rather than focusing on his eyes. “…like…” I’d thought speaking would jolt him into moving his hand, but it stayed on mine. “Like I’m the one who’s crowding you.”
Steven’s lips parted, his gasp near-silent. “Wow.” He lifted his hand away from mine, rested it in his own lap. “Is that what you really think? Am I crowding you?”
“Steven. Just listen.” I hadn’t thought to interrupt him, but the words were out before I could stop them and I had no idea what I was going to say next, what I wanted him “Fuck. This has got all mixed up. I don’t know how… Okay.” I took a deep breath and some sick, twisted part of me wondered if the living room had shrunk to the size of a confessional box.
“Anyone I get involved—I mean, fool around with… I’m not good with people.”
“Duh. Yeah, we’ve established that. And how.”
“I tend to back off. Quickly. I don’t do serious. You know?”
Steven bit his lip and I watched as his eyes narrowed. That incline to his head was back again, and I wanted to know what was going on inside that infuriating, intriguing, gorgeous head of his. “So…”
“So?” I was the one who was pushing him away, but I was the one who waited on his verdict.
“You are so tightly wound it’s untrue.”
“That’s as may be—”
“You really need to get laid.”
“I— What?”
“Seriously. I mean, I know my hand-job would have relieved some of the tension, but let’s face it, any guy can give himself the five-knuckle shuffle. Still, I didn’t want to move too fast on my first night here.”
“Oh. Clearly.”
“Just thought I’d help you out, yeah?”
“How very…noble?”
“But it seems to me like you freak out every time someone gets close to you and I don’t mean emotionally. That is, it’s clear to anyone with two brain cells to rub together that you’re an emotional retard, but—”
“This is you trying to seduce me?”
“—physically, you’re like a frightened rabbit at times. I’m not gonna kill you, for fuck’s sake, Kit.”
“Thank God for that. You had me worried.”
“Not even gonna hurt you. Unless you like that sort of thing.”
“What?”
“See? Easy to wind up. So. Damn. Easy. A couple more minutes of me taking the piss and you’d probably explode.”
“Maybe you’d better stop then?”
“I know just the thing that’ll relieve some of that tension.”
“I am not fucking tense.”
“Oh. Really.” Steven drew back a touch, eyebrows raised in a perfectly-executed, silent, that’ll be fucking right.
“If I am it’s your fault.”
“Maybe I should do something to relieve it then.”
“Uh-oh. I don’t like the sound of this…”
“You’re the only gay guy I know who’d turn down the chance of a blowjob.”
“Will you stop the— What?”
“Ah, see? I knew that’d get your attention.”
“You’re seriously telling me you would…?”
“No.” Steven shook his head and the movement of his black curls drew my attention.
Oh, just the thought of grabbing two handfuls of them and forcing him to—
“I’m telling you I will. “ He leaned in and my first reaction was to back off; God knew why, but it was my reflex. He was right. When anyone got close… But he was too quick, and the settee back held me in place for him anyway. “Jesus. I have no idea why I let you do this to me,” he murmured before curving his hand around my neck, making me hiss back a cool breath. “You okay?”
“Yeah. Yeah. Fine.” And I was a shitty liar.
“Wondered if it was your neck. Again.”
“No. Neck’s not the part of me that’s all stiff,” I slurred, waiting for him to kiss me.
He’d been winding me up ever since entering the living room and now he had me right where he wanted me—slumped on the settee, frozen with tension and not. Going.
Anywhere.
He gave a quiet laugh and his hand on my neck flinched, tightened. “Are you sure this is all right?”
“Yeah. ‘S fine.”
“Really? ‘Cause if you’re—”
/>
“Steven, just stop fucking winding me up and do it if you’re gonna.”
“You really know how to make a guy feel special.”
“Fuck you.”
“I never bottom. Now don’t tell me. You never top. And what a fine pair we make.”
Steven leaned even closer and my breath caught. “Jesus, you’re…” He sighed and ran his thumb back and forth over my neck, bringing his free hand up to the other side of me. It had been a long time since I’d been cradled like that. “Loosen up, will you? It’s kinda off-putting when you’re getting no response.”
“Oh, I could. But if I do, I’ll…” I bit my lip and tried to avoid his gaze but it was difficult with him inches away from me, so close I felt his breath on my face.
“Yeah.” He nodded, almost imperceptibly, and spoke in a whisper so restrained it was nothing more than a breath against my skin. “I know what you are.”
My surprise at what he’d said distracted me for only a second, but it was long enough for him to kiss me, both hands on either side of my face like he was trying to stop me backing off and running away. Not that I wanted to. Any need to escape disappeared when I tasted his tongue on mine and I melted.
He didn’t exactly break the kiss—his lips still touched mine, but only while he spoke.
Whispered. “It’s bloody obvious.”
“Gay?”
“No, you fool. You’re an all or nothing person.”
I opened my mouth to protest but I couldn’t. There was no point. It was the truth, and he kissed me again before I was able to form any words anyway.
“There’s no middle ground with you,” Steven said, and lifted one hand away from my skin. My neck felt cold then, or empty, if that made any sense.
“You’re a regular little psycholo— fuck.” He hadn’t even touched me, just gone for my belt. “Steven.”
“See, you’re doing it again. That was your panic voice. Your ‘I’m trying to come up with an excuse to wriggle out of this’ voice.”
“You don’t take no for an answer, do you?”
He stopped, drew back and frowned, but his lips still twisted into an almost-smile. I may have infuriated him, but I amused him too. “I would if you meant it.”
“Now you can read my mind.”
“I don’t have to. Anyone can read you like a book. Besides, I know you fancy me. You’re the one with a boner, Blackman.”
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